Causation and the law of independence

Abstract

Titans like Bertrand Russell or Karl Pearson warned us to keep our mathematical and statistical
hands off causality and at the end David Hume too. Hume's philosophy has dominated discussion about causality for a long time. But more and more researchers are working hard on this
field and trying to do it better. Much of the recent philosophical or mathematical writings on
causation either addresses to Bayes networks, to the counterfactual approach to causality developed in detail by David Lewis, to Reichenbach's Principle of the Common Cause or to the
Causal Markov Condition. None of these approaches to causation investigated the relationship
between causation and the law of independence, to a necessary extent. Only, may an effect occur in the absence of a cause? May an effect fail to occur in the presence of a cause? In so far,
what does constitute the causal relation? On the other hand, if it is unclear what does constitute
the causal relation, maybe we can answer the question, what does not constitute the causal relation. This publication will prove, that the law of independence defines causation to some extent ex negativo.